Your Friendly Neighborhood Drone

A woman in Seattle's Capitol Hill neighborhood reported to a local news blog in May that she had seen (and her husband briefly conversed with) a man who was operating a "drone" from a sidewalk, guiding the noisy device to a point just outside a third-floor window in a private home. The pilot said he was "doing research" and, perhaps protected by a 1946 U.S. Supreme Court decision, asserted that he was not violating anyone's privacy because he, himself, was on a public sidewalk while the drone was in public airspace. The couple called for a police officer, but by the time one arrived, the pilot and his drone had departed, according to a report on the Capitol Hill Seattle blog.